A pack of cards is the most important part of any poker game – make sure you never play with a duff deck again
LOOK
They’re authentic casino cards and the corner’s been nicked off so you can’t take them back in and fleece the house. You can buy decks from most of the major Vegas casinos – these are from the Rio, the home of the World Series. 3/5
SHUFFLEABILITY
They come with what’s called a ‘casino finish’, which could mean anything. In this case it means fairly smooth, slippy and too rigid to do anything but a swirl shuffle. No wonder that’s how they choose to do things in casinos. 2/5
MIDDLE BEND
A pleasant surprise. It didn’t show much inclination towards righting itself but a quick smoothing action and the Rio card lived to fight another day. 4/5
CORNER BEND
We might have been too harsh on the casino finish before. Another plucky performance saw the card back to near-perfect. The best performer bar the novelty mammoth cards in this test. 4/5
NINJA
Similar to the Bee cards, with lots of damage to the corners of the cards and far less aerodynamics than the expensive plastic cards – as you might expect. Flipped several times on dealing. 2/5
WASHABILITY
It might stay in shape but it can’t take the coke and coffee. Certainly not the worst by any means – with very little staining – but the edges of the card split and if you thought it was rigid before… 3/5
VALUE FOR MONEY
Cheap and cheerful. They do the job and lend your home game some casino cool. They might not use these at the WSOP but you can always pretend.3/5
OVERALL
Ultimately the pack is a gimmick – and not a particularly good one at that – but the cards aren’t terrible and if you want to recreate a casino at home these aren’t a bad option.
Total score: 21/35
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